Opposition: wave of drafting to Army a sign of Kiev’s unwillingness to implement Minsk-2

Date of publication: 17 01 2016, 19:21

Ukraine’s plans to carry out the seventh wave of drafting to the Army is a sign that Kiev has no plans to implement the Minsk accords, the country’s Opposition Bloc political party said on Saturday.

“Statements about a next wave of drafting testify to the fact that the authorities have no plans to implement the Minsk agreements but on the contrary, intend to put Ukraine at risk of sliding into the war again,” the oppositional political party said.

Kiev “needs to cut short all attempts to draft more soldiers and should focus on implementation of the Minsk deal, that is amend the constitution, adopt laws on local elections in the areas not controlled by the government and on amnesty,” they said.

“Such statements (about the seventh wave of drafting) are playing into the hands of those who wish to defeat a compromise plan on Donbass and to plunge Ukraine into renewed full-scale hostilities that have already claimed dozens of thousands of our citizens’ lives,” the Opposition Bloc said.

On Friday, Ukrainian Armed Forces’ General Staff announced the seventh wave of drafting to the Army, promising to get both conscripts and contract servicemen.

Partial drafting to the Armed Forces has taken place six times over the past two years. Ukrainian defence sources say the numeric strength of the Army grew almost twofold over the period to 280,000 servicemen.

Almost 70,000 Ukrainian military are deployed at present along the Line of Contact in Donbass, a territory in eastern Ukraine where the self-proclaimed unrecognized Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics are located.

At the moment, the Army is staffed with soldiers drafted during the fourth, fifth and sixth waves of drafting.